Avon Archaeology Limited

Heritage and Research

Written Scheme of Investigation

Written Schemes of Investigation (WSIs) increasingly form a specific planning condition. Preceding a fieldwork project WSIs are an archaeological method statement required by local authorities for approval ahead of archaeological fieldwork. We have a track record for the swift production WSIs to the full satisfaction of the local authority archaeological planning officers for all of the areas in which we work.

Desk Based Assessments

The collation, and presentation in report form, of a very wide variety of base-line data, much of it based on historical documentation and archives, to provide a comprehensive, one-stop source of information relating to a particular site; and upon which a local authority may base any assessment of whether further archaeological work, involving field investigation at whatever level, is required.

Historic Landscape Analysis

This is a crucial tool in the assessment of particular sites for archaeological potential. In this respect, AAL can demonstrate a high level of expertise in the use of evidence from an extremely wide variety of sources, most notably historic maps, documents, aerial photography and LiDAR. A key source however, that is all too often ignored in commercial archaeology, is the use of toponomy in the discovery of new and previously unrecorded archaeological sites. Place-names and field-names can be critical indicators in this respect, and AAL can show concrete examples of new sites which it has identified by this means. Most notable has been the discovery of what is almost certainly a previously unknown, large Neolithic henge monument in Bath and North-East Somerset, the presence of which was initially revealed by a historic field name in the course of research for a desk-based assessment. The nature of the feature has now been confirmed by an independent geophysical survey of the site.